Poll: most don't feel safe near campus

With the recent shooting of University of Cincinnati student Phillip Wesseler fresh on the minds of students, The News Record conducted an unscientific poll of students asking them if they feel safe around campus.

Of 129 responses, 74 percent of students said they feel unsafe near campus and 26 percent said they felt safe.

Theresa Shafermeyer, a fifth-year chemical engineering student, lived on Warner Street, where Wesseler was shot, for four years before she moved farther off-campus where she felt safer.

"I feel safe on campus," she said. "But when I lived on Warner, I witnessed a car break-in. I called the cops and they said they couldn't file a report because it wasn't my car. My roommates were held up at gunpoint right outside of my house. I don't feel safe around campus."

Kelly Murray, a second-year nursing student, agrees that she feels safe on campus but not off, meaning on the other side of Clifton Avenue, Calhoun and Jefferson Streets or Martin Luther King Drive.

Murray doesn't live on campus, but she said she often visits her friends who live on the north side of Burnet Woods.

"I feel really safe on campus," she said, "but when I have to walk through Burnet Woods at night I get really creeped out from strange people just sitting in cars."

Not all students felt a fear of being off campus at night, however.

Second-year civil engineering student Joe Rodenbeck said he doesn't mind walking around off campus late at night.

"I feel safe on and around campus," said Rodenbeck.

"It's kind of scary cause I was at the same intersection where the kid was shot," Rodenbeck said. "But I still don't really feel scared."

Engineering graduate student John Volpe said that Wesseler's shooting has caused him to feel unsafe off campus.

"They need to do something," Volpe said. "This is not a UC problem, it's a community problem." However, Volpe said that he thinks UC students need to get more involved.

"College students just don't know how to protect themselves," he said. "This is a very vulnerable [area] because it is a college campus."

According to the District 5 neighborhood crime statistics Web site, in 2004 there were no murders in the Clifton Heights and College Hill area. As of 2005, numbers have not increased. Drawn from data collected between January and March from the same Web site, there has been one murder in the near-campus area.

There were 28 cases of rape in 2004, and eight cases in 2005.

"I'm not really surprised." said Lt. Karen Patterson, supervisor of Public Safety, in regards to the student shooting.

Because of the impacts that the shooting has had on the UC community, student leaders will meet next week with university police and community councils to discuss ways to make the area safer.

"If I were a student and heard about a shooting that close to campus I wouldn't feel safe," she said. "There have been studies that show people feel safer in areas with which they are familiar. If a person lived in Kenwood and you asked them if they felt safe in Over-The-Rhine, they might say not at all. But their response might be different if they lived in Over-The-Rhine."